A reactive architecture and a world model for an autonomous underwater vehicle

An architecture for the control of an autonomous vehicle for underwater operation is described, focusing on the important characteristics for autonomy. This approach considers a layered structure of interacting and concurrent modules, called behaviours, each one trying to perform its own independent activity, altogether producing an `intelligent´ global behaviour for the vehicle. The behaviours are kept simple, and their short term memory and combined performance suggest a reactive system. A layer for avoiding traps and deadlock situations is proposed, as a means of producing some sort of planning, which is not typical of reactive architectures. Explanations of natural systems are analyzed and exploited as guides for the design of autonomous underwater vehicles. The world model of the AUV is defined and divided in two major components. Its integration in the control architecture is described. The interface with the user is an important issue in this type of vehicles and therefore its support, namely at the world model is discussed. A simple case study in the end tries to illustrate the presented approach